United Rail Passenger Alliance

Volume 3 Number 36

1. By the calendar, it’s still summer, but for all practical purposes, the summer travel season has ended. However, with less than a month to go in Amtrak’s fiscal year, the Sunset Limited is still not running east of New Orleans. What’s taking so long?As noted last week in TWA, Amtrak was considering dropping one daily roundtrip between the Northeast and Williamsburg, Virginia, which in 2007 will be celebrating the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Virginia colony at nearby Jamestown (Or, as we native Virginians like to think, the beginning of Civilization.). Over one million visitors are expected for the celebration, and Amtrak was very close to dropping one of only two daily trains. This is a vivid demonstration of how Amtrak’s annihilative planning department operates in more of a vacuum than anything else. We see this same phenomenon regarding the Sunset Limited. Partial facts are given out about ridership east of New Orleans and nocturnal station stops. None of that hardly matters. What matters are total revenue passenger miles, the Sunset east of New Orleans as part of Amtrak’s national route matrix, and overhead or connecting business between the Amtrak hubs of New Orleans and Jacksonville and Orlando. As long as the Sunset Limited doesn’t run east of New Orleans, there is a huge gap in Amtrak’s national long distance system, one which a lot of public money on all levels went into in the early 1990s to plug. We must question how good of information is flowing to the ultimate decision makers at Amtrak about the Sunset Limited east of New Orleans. Is the full story being told? Is all of the high volume connecting business at Jacksonville and New Orleans being considered? Even if the Sunset Limited remains terminated at New Orleans, is a daily replacement train between New Orleans and Jacksonville and Orlando being considered, which would eliminate all of the nocturnal station stops? There are so many options available to Amtrak to continue to live up to its corporate name: National Railroad Passenger Corporation. Please, note the word “National.” It means everybody, including the residents of the Gulf Coast and Florida’s panhandle, currently without any train service, at all.
2. It is difficult to imagine what various and alleged stakeholders in the search for a new president and CEO of Amtrak were expecting from the Amtrak Board of Directors. Were they expecting another transit official who believes in the wrongly perceived glory of power of government over private enterprise? Where they expecting a resurrected, retired railroad executive who has always wanted to run passenger trains, but couldn’t at the freight railroads? Were they expecting a long lost child of the late Amtrak Chairman and President Graham Claytor who would carry on the family tradition?It’s no telling who was expected, but we know we have former Union Pacific Vice President Alexander Kummant. Mr. Kummant, 46, who has also worked for a number of other private industries outside of the railroad industry, is an enigma to almost all Amtrak watchers. Somehow, in the closed minds of some, this disqualifies him from being the next chief steward of Amtrak. Here is what one longtime Washington wag had to say: Read more…